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25 replies

After the stride, what starts the swing?

M Michael'sDad100+ posts
Not wanting to get into a rotational vs. linear discussion here but my son, who is now 15 ½ and about 6’ 198lbs., needs a little help. About 16 months ago he broke a bone in his right hand, he is right handed, that would not heal and required surgery. He was 6 months in a cast and then about 3 months getting his arm back in playing condition. The last 7 months he has been playing regularly and working on his timing. Before the break he appeared, at least to me, to be a mostly rotational hitter. He could hit with power and for average against good pitching and hit to all fields. Since the break he has been able to hit for power but his average has dropped and he is getting fooled by the off speed stuff and mostly pulls the ball.

His HS coach and Showcase coach, who happens to be a small college coach, both say he is getting out in front of the pitches and not waiting on them. Last night in the cage at the local batting facility he hit particularly poorly. The owner, who played D1 ball at Ga Tech. and gives hitting lessons, walked by and watched for a few minutes and said he was leading with his hands and letting go with the top hand too soon. He told my son that after the stride you should begin the swing to the ball with his hips and then explode through with the hands.

Now comes the rife that has my son all confused. My son said he has been told to start the swing with his hands by two of the best hitting coaches in the area, one is no longer here and the other doesn’t give lessons anymore. They are the ones that my son first took lessons from and helped develop his swing. I said that I remember them saying that but that I thought they meant to start your swing with the hands by a slight load (rearward movement of the hands) and didn’t mean that the hands fired to the ball first. He has been trying to attack the ball with his hands first since the injury. Before the injury he says he really didn’t worry about it he would just swing the bat.

I have a video of him hitting in a wood bat tournament just prior to his injury. He hit particularly well during this tournament. From a review of this video in slow motion, it looked like his hands and hips started their turn toward the ball at the same time.

Which is it? Can some of you guru’s explain the start of the swing?

Thankyou,
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SLIDER24SLIDER2410+ posts
The GT guy is correct.
I explain it like this.
(1) Timing the pitcher. This is the loading of the hands. It does not matter which style of stance they have. The hands will and must always get into a loaded position.
(2) Timing the pitch. This is the stride.
(3) Swing. This begins with the Hips and then the hands follow through. The first thing to move in the load (hands) should be the last thing to move in the swing (hands).
This allows the batter to see the ball longer, a lot of times you will here it said as keeping the hands back.
LOAD, STRIDE, SWING.
CoachB25CoachB25Honorary "Old TImer"
quote:
Originally posted by Teacherman:
Impossible to be a good hitter if the hands lead.

The swing starts in the hips. It's a center out movement. Not a ground up movement.

If you were going to throw a medicine ball against a wall would the hands move first? Nope. It's a very similar action in hitting. The hips go first.


Teacherman's point is well taken. We do A LOT of medicine ball work. One major reason is that whether our player is a pitcher or hitter, they need core strength to be successful. In other words, hips as a part of the core.

To be sure, any forward movement of those hands prior to that stride or "negative rotation." is not conducive to a good swing.

If I can, let me interject one other thing into this discussion, perhaps your son misunderstood what the two coaches were saying. I am attending all kinds of clinics now and some of these hitting coaches comment on hands. They use terms like relaxed, quiet, etc. One even stated that he coached, "locate the hands, locate the release point" as a part of the swing. This was done as the pitcher began the windup. Maybe these coaches were refereing to this type of situation instead of saying that the hands had to be active in the swing before the stride. Just a thought!
S swingbuster1,000+ posts
The swing process has started before the stride. What I mean is that the Hands can c-ock ( tip the bat to the pitcher)during the stride and before the lead foot is down and the top hand is traveling around the bottom hand, the rear elbow is internally rotating, and the bat barrel is seeking the plane of the pitch as the front base forms and blocks forward motion.

People need to relook at the rear elbow slotting and see the hand action prior to slotting that makes it all work correctly.In golf, instructors say turn your bottom hand under your top at the top of the back swing. It is similar in baseball except the lead elbow is bent
http://www.youthbaseballcoaching.com/mpg/tejadaside.mpeg

Watch Tejada turn the bottom hand under the top and then internally rotate his rear elbow befor it slots. This temporarily locks the shoulder turn ...the hips get ahead and the shoulders unlock as the hands turn over to get on plane. Thats how hands work, why they work and why players talk about them when the physics say that cannot generate power. The sequence generates power and the hands can control torque by this means.

As the hips rotated into toe touch and the hands were getting into launch position torque was building BECAUSE the hips are now ahead.

The question is not hips or hands as the hips should always be slightly ahead....it is how can you get the upper body loading properly(internally) as the front side is firming , blocking and rotating open. There is room for Hands discussion here. Understanding the role of the hands in this context is worthy of much effort.
Last edited by swingbuster
CoachB25CoachB25Honorary "Old TImer"
quote:
Originally posted by swingbuster:

The question is not hips or hands as the hips should always be slightly ahead....it is how can you get the upper body loading properly(internally) as the front side is firming , blocking and rotating open. There is room for Hands discussion here. Understanding the role of the hands in this context is worthy of much effort.


greenjump applaude greenjump
S swingbuster1,000+ posts
CoachB25

Found this this am and thought about your quotes about feel your hands etc. Jack Mankin has studies and described this for years. It has fallen on deaf ears because he atated that the top hands pulled th bat back to the catcher and nobody buys that....not in c onscience sense anyway.

The point here( from me ) is that he really is correct IMO an deserves a hard look at just what he is saying. Here it is......
THT & Pre-launch Torque
Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com on Wed Dec 29 18:04:22 2004



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi All

I have noticed in our discussions of swing mechanics that there is some confusion in understanding torque applied during “pre-launch” and how it relates to torque applied during THT and the actual swing. The post below is from the Archives and discusses that relationship. Following the post, I will analyze clips from http://www.youthbaseballcoaching.com/swings.html to show how the two relate.
##

Re: THT
Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com on Mon Sep 8 151435 2003

Question/Comment:

>>> Following is a link to a file with some frames showing my interpretation of THT. Please let us know if this is correct. How do you teach it? Is the que flatten the hands useful? (The file is best viewed in frame by frame mode)

(http://webpages.charter.net/nickkio/THT.mpg

Thanks, Nick >>>

Jack Mankin's reply:

Hi Nick:

In order to generate maximum bat speed at contact, the better hitters first accelerate the bat-head back toward the catcher before rotating and directing their energies at the ball. The purpose of Top-Hand-Torque is to apply forces to the bat that will accelerate the bat-head in an arc back toward the catcher. With many hitters, Bonds and Sosa to name a couple, the bat-head is accelerated back in two phases.

The first phase occurs prior to shoulder rotation and we refer to it as “Pre-launch” Torque. During this phase, the batter starts with the bat cocked forward toward the pitcher and has his hands some distance from the back-shoulder. Bonds, for example, starts with his hands low and forward from the back-shoulder. As he prepares the launch position, his hands (as a unit) are brought up and pulled to the back-shoulder.

The bat-head is being accelerated into the normal launch position by the top-hand being pulled back at a faster rate than the bottom hand (THT). Therefore, the hands as a unit are being pulled to the back-shoulder but the top-hand is moving faster, or, arcing around the bottom-hand. During the pre-launch phase, one can clearly see the top-hand being pulled up and back (or toward the catcher).

The second phase of THT occurs during initiation as shoulder rotation begins. The direction of force applied by the top-hand at initiation continues to be rearward, but shoulder rotation accelerates the hands (as a unit) around and forward. Therefore, once shoulder rotates begins, the hands (as a unit) are viewed moving forward, but the rearward directional force of the top-hand causes it (and the bat-head) to arc around the slower moving bottom-hand.

Many good hitters do not use pre-launch torque in their swings. They apply THT at initiation as described for the second phase. Since they are applying THT as the shoulder starts turning, the hands (as a unit) will always be viewed moving in a forward arc. --- Nick, the clips you are showing have the batters starting with the bat at (or past) the normal launch position.

Note: With linear mechanics, at initiation, the direction of force of the top-hand and the hands (as a unit) are both moving forward. This results in a straighter hand-path and less angular acceleration of the bat-head. --- With THT, the rearward directional force of the top-hand results in the hand-path being directed more parallel with the catcher’s shoulders and into a more circular hand-path (CHP).

Jack Mankin
TRhitTRhit10,000+ posts
Allow me to draw from my experieince with my son who was a excellent hitter in HS and college

He had a stance that was straight up with feet apart by about a foot--- his trigger mechanism was his cocking of his hands and arms as the pitcher began his motion--he was ready to "explode " on every pitch.

The stride and swing were almost one but not really --his stride was a milisecond before the hand movement--- it was a very fluid explosion with great bat speed

Yes the stride begins before the hands but in reality it is one fluid motion of all the parts
TRhitTRhit10,000+ posts
Blue Dog

You claim to know more than most about hitting

Prove it!!!

Don't come back with comments adn questions

I for one think you are quite an intelligent man but do not know how to get your point across---when you do that then we might be ablesee what you know

Hitting is not as tough as you want to make it-- the kid who is a hitter is a hitter regardless of what you or anyone else teaches him-

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